


Spare a Little Candle, Save Some Light for Me

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Brief Suicide Mention/Threat, Brother-Sister Relationships, Bullying, Dubious Consent (Age Difference), Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Friendship, Parental Verbal Altercations, Sibling Incest, The 1980's, teenage years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:18:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6950290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Norma's eighth grade year is filled with a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FALL

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Well, damn. This fic became a wooly mammoth of a fic, so I split it up into parts. I hope you like it!
> 
> A/N 2: Title is from the song "These Dreams" by Heart. Most other songs are identified in-text, but I'll also have an end-note at the end of each chapter with the songs used. There may be an 8tracks mix post-reveals.
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful beta, Chaosprincess!

Norma Louise Calhoun flung one leg gracelessly over the other and leaned forward in her desk – well, she guessed it was technically a desk, but also a chair. A chair-desk.

Whoever had thought that a chair-desk was a good idea hadn’t been unnaturally tall. 

Norma was thirteen years old, gawky and spindly. She had long blonde hair which she had, at one point, been proud of.

That had been a while ago.

“Hey, Board-ma,” hissed a voice behind her, and she grit her teeth, wondering how it seemed that the teachers never appeared to hear any of this. Then again, maybe it was that they heard but didn’t care – after all, what measure was a Calhoun? Their last name was synonymous with being dirty and poor at this school.

Norma didn’t disappoint in that regard. She liked the blue dress she had on, but it didn’t quite reach her knees; not due to any attempt to look seductive, but because the previous owner must have been much shorter than her. She kept reaching down to pull it, hoping the kid behind her wasn’t trying to peek at her. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Now, she whipped her head around and glared at the kid in question.

“Developed yet, Board-ma?” he sneered again. “I can see your underwear, you know! I see London, I see France…”

“Shut up,” she hissed in response. 

“I think Board-ma’s actually a boy,” another voice chimed in gleefully. “We should find out one of these days.”

“Science!” the first kid agreed, and they erupted into giggles. 

Norma bit down hard on her pen and stared at the blackboard. 

_If Caleb was here…_ she let herself think. 

***

Norma stared up at the ceiling and yawned. She was still wearing the same dress, the one that had looked pretty when she’d plucked it out of the black trash bag but was obviously just another way to mark herself the lowest of the law in Akron Middle School society.

“Do you think I’m pretty, Caleb?”

Her feet were up on the metal overhang at the edge of the cot, dangling. She’d given up on trying to pull on the stupid thing, to make it fit. It wasn’t like Caleb could see, anyway. He was facing the other direction, his own feet propped up on the tiny bookcase they shared, in the tiny room they also shared.

“You’re the prettiest girl I know.”

Norma kicked at the overhang. 

“You’re just saying that. All the boys in school say I’m ugly and call me Board-ma.”

There was a long pause.

“Cause, uh…”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“It’s just not fair. I’m taller than all the other girls, but I look like a kid where it matters.”

Caleb snorted.

“That’s not what matters, Norma Louise. Seriously.” He sat up, and curled one leg under himself to look at her. “You’re better than all of ‘em. You’ll see. Plus, you’ll be out of there soon enough and then you’ll be in high school with me. And I’ll kick their asses.”

Norma tilted her head back.

“High school’s forever.”

“In the meantime… I could teach you how to fight.”

***

“It’s too hot to be in here,” Norma grumbled. “I want to pour water all over myself.” She kicked her legs up and turned her head to look at her brother. “Guys are so lucky. You can sit around in nearly nothing.” With her hand, she indicated Caleb’s current lack of shirt and quite short shorts. “But if I did that, I’d have people up my ass about it twenty-four seven. It’s not even fair.”

“You’d think it’d be the other way around. I think way more people would wanna see you in less and me in more.” Caleb cocked an eyebrow. 

“Yeah right. You probably have sixty-five girlfriends.”

“Sixty-five? That’s a big number. I probably don’t even know sixty-five girls.”

Norma scowled.

“Why do I even need to go to school? It’s stupid. We should drop out and run away.”

“Nah, you shouldn’t. Maybe me, but not you. You’re smart. You’re gonna do something, Norma Louise.”

“Like what?”

Caleb shrugged and snaked his leg over to ensnare Norma’s.

“Not sure yet. But something great.”

***

Norma stripped off her dress and pulled on her shorts first, staring inside the surprisingly shiny white inside of the locker in front of her.

Behind her, a girl snickered.

“Look at No-Boobs Norma!”

Norma rolled her eyes. She guessed this was the new version of “Board-ma”, just with more alliteration.

“Hey, maybe if we put some seeds on her, she’ll grow like a Chia Pet or something!”

“N-n-n-norma!” another girl chimed in.

Norma pulled on her T-shirt and rolled around.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” she snarled. “Go FUCK yourself!”

The girl behind her stepped back a moment and laughed. 

“What are you going to do about it?”

Norma reached back and slapped her hard across the face.

***

“Miss Calhoun, I’m ashamed at you.”

Norma pulled at her shorts, then crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. She looked at her assistant principal’s sharp face, her unyielding eyes, watched as she tapped a pencil against the desk. 

“There is never an excuse to hit anyone. I will be sending home a note – I want to see your parents tomorrow for a conference. This is unacceptable behavior.”

She handed Norma an envelope and sent her out into the hallway.

The door was open enough for Norma to hear her say, “Scum, just like her brother…”

***

Norma slid through the door and stepped inside, already shaking. She could only hope that her father wasn’t home – she wouldn’t even be able to open her mouth if he started asking her about the envelope in her hand.

It was her mother who she ran into when she stepped into the living room. She was sitting on the couch with her hands in her lap, staring at the television, even though it was not currently turned on. 

“Norma.” Her mother’s voice spoke, but she wasn’t looking at Norma. She was still staring at the black screen.

“Hey,” Norma called in response. “Mom – I have this… I got in trouble at school.” She extended her hand with the envelope, swallowing.

Francine Calhoun took a moment to turn her head, then reached out and grasped the envelope lazily. She nearly dropped it before she successfully brought it back into her lap.

“What do they want?” she asked.

“They want you to come in for a conference,” Norma said quietly. She knotted her hands at the sides of her dress.

Francine’s hands brushed over the top of her hair as she let out a tiny noise.

“You’ll have to tell them I can’t, Norma. I can’t go to this thing. They have you all day, what do they want me to do about it? Can’t they just punish you there? I’m so tired.” She slid the envelope half under the couch cushion, then seemed to think better of it and pulled it back out. “You should tear this up. I can’t let your father find out about this. You just tell them I can’t. I’m too tired. Tell them I’m sick. I can’t deal with this right now, Norma.” She thrust the envelope in Norma’s direction and laid back down on the couch, turning over on her side and pressing her hand to the cushion. “It’s too hot.” She made a brushing gesture with her hand. “Go play with your brother.”

***

Norma awoke to find Caleb sitting next to the cot, his legs crossed and a book set across his lap.

“Hey, Norma Louise,” he called quietly, and she let out a yawn and pressed her face into her pillow.

“What time is it, Caleb?” she asked.

“It’s nearly seven. We’d better get going.” He clapped his book closed and turned his head to look at her. “Hey – after school, you wanna go to a carnival?”

***  


“You want to go on the Super Round Up, Norma Louise?”

Norma looked up at the ride in front of them. It looked like there were a hundred chairs spinning in mid-air. She sucked in a breath.

“It looks kind of scary, Caleb.”

Caleb clapped his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t be scared. I’ve got you. I’ll be right next to you.”

She made a tentative noise.

“Oh… Okay.” She smiled, lifting her shoulders up with a little more confidence. “Let’s do it.”

They ran up the steps, handing in their tickets, and took two spots next to each other, unlocking the safety bar and rushing in before reattaching it.

Other children ran up alongside them, grabbing their own spots.

The door slammed shut and the ride began, spinning first and then turning on its side.

Norma felt herself pushed up against it, unable to move, spinning every which way and seeming to fly through the air. She felt dizzy.

“Caleb!” she yelled in a sudden panic, wondering what would happen if the ride suddenly spun off its hinges, suddenly threw her out of her little pouch.

“Norma Louise.” She heard the response, first, then felt a hand grab her own. “You don’t have to be afraid when I’m here with you.” 

She squeezed back.

***

Norma lay back along the cot and let out another moan of discomfort. Her hair was sticky to her head, and she could feel sweat pouring from her scalp, her hands, her feet. She was itchy, and no position remedied it.

She finally settled for gently kicking Caleb in the leg until she heard him stir.

“Caleb, it’s hot as hell,” she griped. “I’m all sticky. How can you even sleep in this?”

Caleb made a sound that indicated he was not yet awake. A moment later, he sat up. 

“Well, you’re wearing a whole dress,” he pointed out, rubbing his eyes. 

“Yeah, and?” Norma shot back.

Caleb shrugged.

“You should just take it off,” he gestured down to his boxers. “Otherwise it’s impossible.”

“Too bad we can’t sleep downstairs anymore,” Norma commented. She could remember when she and Caleb had been younger, maybe when she had been five or six, when Caleb had crashed on the couch and she’d pulled up a blanket on the floor, so they could take advantage of the sole air conditioner in the living room window.

“Wouldn’t do any good without the air conditioner.”

Norma closed her eyes and remembered the deafening crash it had made when it had collided with concrete, how she’d pressed her hands over her ears and let out a shriek.

“It’d be cooler at least. Doesn’t hot air rise?”

Caleb shrugged.

“Yeah, well, if you wanna fight Mom for the couch.” He flopped back on the cot.

Norma hesitated.

“You won’t look at me and laugh?”

“Can’t promise I won’t look, but I know I won’t laugh.”

Norma turned her back to him. 

“I can’t get this zipper… can you help?”

***

Norma swung her legs over the washing machine and let out a nervous giggle.

“Is this really going to work? I think you’re making this up!”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Caleb told her, and he reached past her, letting his hand brush against her thigh for a second, to hit the “start” button.

“T-t-t-t-this… j-j-just feels….weird,” Norma told him. “People are really supposed to feel good doing this? I’m just afraid I’m going to fall off.”

Caleb extended his arms.

“C’mere.”

She put her hands on his shoulder and hopped off the washer. Norma reached down and brushed at her dress.

“So… Caleb…” she started.

“Yeah?”

“Good like… how?”

Caleb smiled shyly.

“One of these days I’ll show you.”

***

“Today we will be discussing Anne Frank and her famous diary. What can anyone tell me about her?”

The boy in front of Norma whispered something that was not quite audible, but clearly dirty. 

Norma curled up her nose and hissed under her breath, “At least somebody knows how to write.”

“What was that?” the boy whirled around and asked Norma. “Did you say something, Board-ma?”

Norma gritted her teeth.

“I said at least Anne Frank knew how to write. And something other than ‘For a good time, call.’” She smirked, pretty proud of herself.

“Miss Calhoun,” the teacher cut in, “That’s enough. Back to what we were discussing, who can tell us about…”

Norma reached into her bag and plucked out a small composition book. She opened to the first page and began:

_Dear Diary,_

_My name is Norma Louise Calhoun… and I am surrounded by idiots._

***

“Where is everybody?” Norma inquired as she stuck her head into the doorway. 

Caleb pushed himself off the cot and looked up at her.

“Dad’s at the bar and Mom is at the doctor.” He looked down at the watch on his wrist. “For the next hour at least.”

Norma plopped down on the bed.

“So we have the house to ourselves, huh?” she offered.

“Seems like it.”

There was a long pause.

Norma raised a nail to her mouth and bit it, before speaking up in a tiny voice, “Hey, um, when you said you’d… show me? What did that mean?” Her cheeks were bright red, she was sure of it. She had to have misunderstood him, after all. She stared down at the hardwood floor.

The next thing she knew, Caleb’s finger had found her chin and was guiding it back over towards him.

His lips were on hers, pressing against them softly. 

Norma let out a little gasp and let her eyes slip shut.

This couldn’t be happening, could it?

She could feel his hand on her back, guiding her further into the kiss. 

When he pulled back, slowly, her eyes opened again and found his; they were so big and blue.

“Did you like that?”

There was a desperation behind it, a question.

Norma nodded.

“I liked it.” She raised her hand to her cheek and pushed her own questions to the side. “I love you, Caleb.”

***

There was a pretty redhead in Norma’s class who was often surrounded by another group of girls. She had yet to say anything rude or nasty to Norma, but she hadn’t really said anything nice to her, either.

Norma liked to think that they were out of each other’s orbits, other than the fact that Norma wished she could be her.

The girl had perfect hair, perfect skin, and looked like she was nineteen instead of thirteen. She seemed to always know the answers when she was called on in class, and everyone liked her.

So when she tapped Norma on the shoulder one day as they were leaving Spanish class, Norma didn’t know quite how to react.

“Uh, hey,” she managed. “What’s going on?” She realized she was biting her lip, scratching at a scab on her ear and making it bleed.

“I’m having a sleepover this weekend,” the girl replied, “You wanna come?”

***

Norma set the needle of the tiny record player and let go, smiling as the music began – “Your Wildest Dreams” by the Moody Blues.

_“Once upon a time, once when you were mine…  
I remember skies… Reflected in your eyes…”_

She rushed up and stepped up on the cot impulsively, trying not to consider the possibility that it was going to break beneath her.

“Caleb! Come dance with me!” she gestured to her brother, who was sitting in the far corner of the room. 

Caleb chuckled.

“I’m not dancing on a bed…”

Norma pouted.

“Yes, you are! Come dance with me – I love this song!”

He sighed and stood up, tentatively putting one foot on the cot and then hoisting himself up. 

“We should jump!” Norma exclaimed, taking a tiny leap and immediately regretting it. She fell forward, into Caleb, and both ended up hitting the cot in a pile of legs and arms.

“You okay?” Caleb inquired.

Norma nodded. 

Her face was right above his.

She pressed a quick, teasing kiss to his lips and pulled herself back up. 

“Love you!” she said quickly. 

He smiled.

“Love you too, Norma Louise.”

She sat down and shimmied back against the wall.

“Hey, guess what?” she asked, “I got invited to a sleepover.”

He looked over and smiled at her. 

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow. So I’ll be back the next morning, I guess.”

Caleb looked away a moment, and then back at her.

“I’ll miss you. Hurry back, okay?”

***

Norma let her feet hang off the bed as she gazed around in wonder. 

This bedroom was filled with nothing but pink. Inch after inch of bright pink. It almost hurt her eyes, but she couldn’t look away, either. It was so different than the peeling flowery wallpaper and fading giraffe art of her own room. This girl had posters everywhere – Norma spotted Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, and Pat Benatar first. In the corner was a white-painted vanity that was covered in more pink – a make-up box, a pink rimmed mirror, and a pen cup that held a bunch of fuzzy pink pens.

Norma had to pull her gaze away to get back to what the girls had been discussing – something to do with boys. 

“Did you get to second base with him?” one girl was asking.

“…Maybe.” 

They burst into giggles. Norma pushed herself back on to her hand, wondering what “second base” meant and hoping they wouldn’t ask her anything about it.

“Oh! Next month _Flowers in the Attic_ is coming out. I’m gonna go see it – how about you?”

The redhead curled up her nose.

“It’s not like they’re going to be able to put all that stuff from the book in it, anyway. I heard it’s PG-13. What a letdown – Chris is probably played by a totally hottie. What about you, Norma? You read that book?”

Norma started.

“No – what’s it about?”

“A brother and sister who have sex!” one girl supplied gleefully.

Norma pushed herself back a little further on the bed.

The redhead rolled her eyes.

“That’s not the only thing it’s about. You’re a pervert.”

She looked at Norma. 

“I’ll lend it to you – lemme get it.”

***

There were girls strewn everywhere around the room – some were sleeping on the huge bed, whereas others were in sleeping bags at various corners of the bright pink carpet.

Norma was off to the side, right near the bathroom door – this girl had her own bathroom! 

Despite the fact that she was comfortable in her sleeping bag – albeit not in pajamas like the rest, which had garnered a few questions before the redhead had gotten them to back off – Norma found herself unable to sleep.

She tossed and turned, looking around at the others. They were all fast asleep, a few of them curled up with teddy bears or blankets, but each and every one of them alone.

She let her hand linger on her stomach a moment, feeling something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. 

Maybe she should have grabbed one of the big pillows, to hold it. Maybe that would make it feel more like…

She reached over to her backpack and zipped it open as quietly as she could, taking out the book and rubbing the pad of her finger over the spine.

Norma tried to shut her eyes again. She let out a long sigh before scooping up her things and tip-toeing over the other girls. She slipped out the door and down the stairs. 

She pulled on the door and found herself home free.

***

Norma had seen a fair deal of movies where people threw rocks at a window to get their love interest’s attention.

It didn’t seem to be working nearly as well in real life. 

She wondered if this was because in movies, people just waited around for their true love’s rock to hit their window, whereas her brother’s current adventure was probably either drinking or sleeping. 

“If your true love showed up, you’d miss them, Caleb,” Norma grumbled and tossed another rock. She should just go back to the sleepover; this was stupid.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a window opening – Caleb stuck his head out.

“Norma? What the hell? I thought you were at some… Never mind. Can you climb up? I don’t want to wake Dad.”

Norma looked up at the tree that grew in their front yard.

“I’ve got it.” She proceeded to swing her leg over the lowest branch and begin scrambling up each branch expertly – they’d climbed it countless times, when they’d been a little younger. She knew this tree like the back of her hand.

When she made it to the window, she tossed her backpack in first, before extending her hand. 

“Caleb – catch me?”

His arms seemed so much larger than hers – when had that happened? – as he pulled her through the window and into the room.

They tumbled to the floor in quiet giggles.

“Why’d you come back? Were those girls mean to you?” Caleb asked once they had calmed down.

“They weren’t mean… I just…” Norma paused. “It didn’t feel right. It wasn’t like being back here.” She didn’t say, with you, but she thought it. 

There was a pause, and then Caleb asked, “Norma – would you like me to show you something else?”

Norma hesitated for only a second before she nodded. 

“Okay. Lay down. Get comfortable – maybe lean against a pillow? We have to try and be really quiet.”

Norma hopped on to the bed and kicked off her shoes and socks.

She closed her eyes at first; she shivered when he stroked her, whimpered when his lips pressed against hers again.

She slept soundly, with her head on his chest. 

***

Norma was staring at her spaghetti and trying to figure out whether it was entirely edible. She had decided to give it up as a bad job when the redhead, flanked by a few of her friends, approached her.

“Hey – what happened to you at the slumber party? We woke up and you weren’t there and someone said they saw you go home.”

Norma bit the inside of her cheek.

“I… felt sick. Sorry… I probably should have said something, I…”

The redhead sighed.

“Okay, yeah. Whatever.” She walked away. 

Norma shifted back in the cafeteria bench and, after looking around nervously, cracked open _Flowers in the Attic_ , and began to read.

***

Norma and Caleb sat at opposites ends of the circular kitchen table, each gnawing on a Pop Tart and looking at each other with worry.

“I wouldn’t drink if you weren’t fucking crazy!”

“I wouldn’t be so fucking ‘crazy’ if you weren’t a drunk! Ray, you’re useless! Just go leave – go leave for good this time!”

“I probably should – anyone off the street would be better than you! Look at you, you’re a mess!”

There was a thump, followed by a crash and the sound of something shattering. A door slammed. 

Francine came walking back into the room.

“Mom,” Caleb called, “You okay?” He rose from his seat and looked at her.

She made a slow waving motion at him.

“I’m fine. I just need to sleep. Gonna get back to sleep. Just go play. Be good kids.” She looked at Caleb with a glazed stare. “Take care of your little sister, Caleb.” Frannie opened the kitchen cabinet and fished out a pill bottle, opening it on the third shaky try. “Don’t let her be like me.” She fished out a pill and tossed it into her mouth, swallowing it. “Don’t you let her fall in love with the first guy off the street, no, you don’t let her throw her life away. If I’d had a brother looking out for me, things would’ve been different, I tell you. He ought to be glad I don’t just go run around with any old person – that would show him. Way he talks to me, way he treats me, I tell you.” She put the cap back on the pills and shoved them into the cabinet. “One of these days I just won’t wake up. That would show him.”

She closed the cabinet door and looked at Norma.

“Listen to your brother, Norma,” she mumbled, and walked back up the stairs.

Norma swallowed, looking over at Caleb.

He was seething.

“We’ll be out of here one of these days. When I’m eighteen, we’re gone.”

***

“Miss Calhoun.”

Norma crossed one leg over the other and looked up at her English teacher.

“Yes?”

“You seem to be struggling – you don’t ever speak up in class, but this paper you just submitted about Anne Frank… It read very well.”

“…Thank you?” Norma asked tentatively. Her teacher smiled.

“You know, I had your brother in my class a few years ago.”

Norma fidgeted in her seat.

“You know Caleb?” she inquired. 

“Yes. How is he?”

Norma chewed her lip. That was a good question – how was he?

“He’s good. He’s a junior.”

Norma was glad that her teacher didn’t point out that Caleb was supposed to be a senior – he’d flunked the ninth grade. 

“How are things at home for you two? Getting along okay?”

Norma rolled her shoulders and couldn’t quite meet her teacher’s eye.

Then she smiled.

“Everything is good at home. We all get along great.”

***

“I don’t need to walk through the fucking door to have you nagging me!”

“I didn’t say anything to you! I was telling my son that you need to take the fucking trash out on the day it actually gets picked up!”

“You made damn sure I heard it though, didn’t you Frannie?”

“Not like you hear anything else!”

The door slammed so hard that Norma was sure the glass in it would really shatter this time. She clasped her hands over her ears and hunched down into a ball. 

“Norma Louise.” Caleb draped his arms around her and held her tight.

“What if they… what if he really… what if they…” Norma whispered. “What would we do?”

“If they kill each other?” Caleb asked. “They won’t. You know they do this every day.”

“But what if…”

“Shh. Come up here.” Caleb rose, patting the cot. “Let’s do this. Ten years from now, if you’ve got everything you ever wanted – what does that look like?”

Norma reached down and scratched at her thigh.

“At twenty-three? Um… Well… I’ll be done college. Somewhere… nice. Somewhere warm. Maybe… Florida, maybe? And I’ll have a degree in… um…” She thought about it. “Writing. I’m going to be writing for magazines. And I’ll be married and live in a nice house. With… well, not a white-picket fence, but like… a nice fence. I’ll have… maybe one baby. And a teeny tiny stroller. A pink one. But during the day, I go out and work and travel while my husband stays home with the baby!” She giggled. “And he’s… maybe he works from home or something?” She let out a sigh. “And we have beautiful family dinners and people come and go and there’s fresh flowers all the time.” She paused. “What about you, Caleb? Where will you be when you’re twenty-seven?”

Caleb looked at her for a long time before he spoke.

“Hopefully, staying home in a house with fresh flowers and a nice fence.”

***

“It’s getting chilly out,” Norma mused, pulling her jacket further around herself as she leaned out over the side of the patio. It was old, and the wood was broken in several places, but there was something Norma had always loved about it – she had pictured it with a nice porch swing or maybe some flowers in a pot on the ledge.

“Yeah, it’s cool for October,” Caleb agreed. He was sitting on the ledge, letting his long legs overhang.

Caleb was getting bigger. Taller and stockier. He’d always been a lanky kid, as long as Norma had been paying attention, but now his arms were starting to bulk up a bit. His baby-face was fading, and he was starting to resemble more of the guitar players in the magazines he was always reading.

He tapped a cigarette on his sneaker and the ash fell off into the grass.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Norma told him, curling her noise. “You’ll taste like an ashtray.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Caleb replied. He tossed it on the step and stomped on it. “We should get inside. You look cold.”

Norma stuck her hands into her jacket pockets.

“Yeah, but inside…”

She didn’t have to say it – she didn’t want to walk back into the living room and stare at the hole in the wall.

“Dad’s out,” Caleb told her, “And Mom’s asleep. We can play some piano. You can show me what you’re learning… You’re always so good.”

Norma sighed and walked up the steps, opening the back door. The two made their way into the living room and sat down at the bench in front of the piano.

Norma opened the folder on top of the piano and set up a page of sheet music – “Tonight, You Belong to Me”.

****

“You don’t need to walk me to school, you know.”

“What else am I supposed to do with my day off?” Caleb asked. 

“What’s the day off for anyway?” Norma kicked a rock off the sidewalk and hopped up on a tiny wall, airplaning her arms and walking like it was a balance beam.

“We’re supposed to shadow someone to learn about a career.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s your career going to be?”

Caleb shrugged.

“I’ll make something up.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged again.

“I don’t know – what career do you think I should pretend to learn about?”

Norma hopped down off of the wall and scratched her chin as she considered the possibilities.

“Maybe something where you don’t actually have to go anywhere. Like, you could say you shadowed a writer.”

“What kind of writer?”

Norma giggled.

“Someone who writes dirty books,” she suggested. “Hey, you ever heard of a book called _Flowers in the Attic_?”

Caleb raised an eyebrow.

“No, what’s it about?”

“Super dirty. You should say you shadowed the lady who wrote that book. I’ll lend it to you.” Norma hopped back up on the wall as it continued. “Hey, how much time do we have, anyway?”

Caleb looked at his watch.

“Like twenty minutes?”

Norma looked up wistfully at the playground that marked the halfway point between their house at the middle school.

“Can we go swing for a bit? I haven’t been on a swing in forever. We need recess in middle school.”

“Hey, I have nowhere to be,” Caleb pointed out.

“You’re supposed to be shadowing dirty book writers,” Norma reminded him, making a sharp left on the grass and running over to the woodchips and then into a waiting swing. “Push me, Caleb!” She let out a gleeful shriek as Caleb pulled her all the way back by the chains and let her go, then gave her a gentle push. She swung forward, kicking her legs out, and then back again. Caleb’s hands seemed linger for a moment on her back before he pushed her forward.

She closed her eyes. This was peace.

***

“Do you think if I got a costume together, anyone would give me candy? Or would they judge me for being thirteen and still trick-or-treating?”

Norma plopped down on the couch and looked over at Caleb, who was reading a guitar magazine.

“Probably both? You still have your cheerleader uniform? If you walked door-to-door in that, people would definitely give you candy,” he mused, flipping a page.

Norma snorted and curled her nose, making a noise.

“Don’t be a pervert, Caleb. Plus that thing fell apart ages ago. I barely even wore it.” She kicked her legs up on the couch and laid back. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

Caleb shrugged.

“Work,” he replied, using air-quotes, “And I think Mom’s upstairs. Said something about calling Aunt Carrie.”

Norma blinked.

“Didn’t we go to her funeral?”

Caleb looked up, then back at his magazine.

“Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In this chapter
> 
> "Your Wildest Dreams" by The Moody Blues


	2. WINTER

“Norma Louise!”

Norma awoke to Caleb gently shaking her awake. 

“Ugh,” she whined, “Caleb, what?”

“It’s snowing!”

Norma had to laugh. It was rare that her brother showed such childish glee. It seemed like he was usually caught up, these days, in trying to be the big bad teenager.

She hopped off the bed and made her way to the window. 

“It really is,” she said, looking at the way the white had already coated the shed in their backyard, as well as some of their neighbor’s cars. “Can we go out and play in it?” She blushed. “I sound like a kid.”

A little voice in her head chastised her, telling her that her brother was seventeen and wouldn’t want to put up with her much longer. She must seem like such a nuisance to him, a pesky brat. 

Caleb smiled.

“You’re not a kid. Yeah, we can. Make sure you get your gloves on – it’s probably pretty cold out there.”

It was pretty cold inside, too, but Norma didn’t see any point in stating the obvious. It was hard to remember the last time the heat had actually worked – probably last year, or maybe even the year before that. Their father kept turning the thermostat whenever he got home, grumbling and punching it, but so far there had been no mentioning of when, if ever, it was getting fixed.

But sleeping curled up to Caleb and both wrapped in blankets, she’d felt warm.

Now, Norma shook off the cold and pulled on her winter jacket, another thing she’d recovered from another black trash bag left on their porch. It was a faded pink and too small for her, but it kept her warm enough.

She added a scarf that she’d bought off a display at the Dollar Store. 

“Let’s go. Don’t start without me!”

***

“You’re freezing.” Caleb’s hand was tangled in Norma’s hair.

“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have stepped on that ice. But it seemed sturdy enough, I guess.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. She’d walked all the way back from school like this; she almost felt numb by now.

“Here, let me help you get out of those…”

Her coat went off first, and as she removed layers she realized she was soaked to the bone. 

“I’ll grab you something,” Caleb told her, turning away to root through her closet. 

When he came back, he moved in, as if to pull the sweater he was holding over her head.

Instead, his lips met hers again.

Norma found herself laying back on the cot, staring up at him. 

“Wait,” she said quickly. Stumbling slightly, she grabbed her bathrobe from the floor and pulled it around herself, then made her way to the record player. “We should have… we should put a song on.” She wasn’t sure if she was stalling for time or trying to set the mood. Wasn’t this what they did in movies? Wasn’t there always a soaring, swelling score to bring two people together?

“Sure,” Caleb said from his spot on the bed, “Looking for anything in particular?” 

She fumbled through the records until she found Heart’s self-titled album and placed it on the turntable, then set the needle and began to make her way back to the bed.

“These Dreams” began to play.

_“Spare a little candle, save some light for me,_  
Figures up ahead, moving in the trees…  
White skin in linen, perfume on my wrist,  
And the full moon that hangs over  
These dreams in the mist…” 

Norma took a deep breath and returned to the cot, stretching out her legs and huddling in the robe.

There was a sudden rumble beneath them, followed by the faint smell of oil.

“The heater!” Norma exclaimed.

Caleb smiled.

“Fixed it this morning. Must have finally kicked in.”

“It’s so nice to be warm…” Norma mused. She swallowed again and then looked back at him. “….I trust you.” 

She laid back against the pillow and shut her eyes.

_“These dreams go on when I close my eyes,_  
Every second of the night I live another life,  
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside,  
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away...” 

***

Norma was still humming the song under her breath when she stepped into the tub. 

She let the hot water run up her legs and over her arms, and as she scooted back, she wondered if she should feel different now. More grown up. 

Caleb was sleeping back on the bed, and she’d watched the rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes before walking into the bathroom. She’d wanted to say something to him, or maybe ask him something, but every word that tried to balance on the tip of her tongue had seemed wrong. 

Maybe she could think in here; maybe the water would help clear her head somehow.

Maybe she should wash her hair. It could dry now, at least. 

The house was warm again.

***

“Hurry up! Keep running!” 

Norma secretly cursed whoever’s idea it had been to train for the Mile indoors. If running around a track for however many minutes (in Norma’s case, usually more rather than less), running around the tiny gym for the same amount of time was even worse. She’d lost track of how many times she had made it around, and unlike the track, she couldn’t get off to the far end and walk for a while without her gym teacher yelling at her.

Norma huffed and puffed as she tried to push through the pain. She wondered what horrible person had decided to make gym class mandatory, and hoped that they were ashamed of themselves. As she neared the bleachers, she slowed down and came to a complete stop, trying to catch her breath.

“Calhoun!” her gym teacher yelled. “Stop slacking! Pick up the pace! I know you can run – no stopping. No pain, no gain!”

Easy for him to say, Norma thought bitterly. He was two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, and a hundred of it had to be muscle.

By the end of sixteen minutes, Norma had walked-run her way to the end of the Mile.

No, wait. The practice mile.

It was going to be a long year.

***

_“If I could turn the page,_  
In time then I'd rearrange just a day or two,  
Close my, close my, close my eyes,  
But I couldn't find a way,  
So I'll settle for one day to believe in you,  
Tell me, tell me, tell me lies…” 

Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies” was playing over the sound system, and Norma mused that she ought to pick up one of their records one of these days. It was nice to hear more rock bands with female vocalists… What would it be like, she wondered, to actually stand in front of an audience and sing? To have all of those people watching her?

She would probably burst into tears if she ever tried it, she decided. It would be far too much pressure.

Probably easier than breaking ten minutes on the mile, though.

She walked over to the Rock section and began flipping through the Heart records.

“Hey, aren’t you Norma?”

She whipped around to find herself staring at a thin, tanned boy with black hair who looked to be about her age. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t really place him out of context.

“….Yeah?” she replied, finally. Just what she needed; some kid to call her Board-ma out in public. She should just lock herself in a cage.

“I’m in your gym class,” he said, “John Massett. I’m kind of new.”

She backed up a little bit and gave him a tentative smile.

“You like Heart?” he continued.

She breathed in and managed to make her mouth form words. Turning back to the records and continuing to look through them was easier.

“Yeah. I’m trying to decide whether I want to spring for _Dreamboat Annie_ ,” she told him. “Maybe next week.”

“Have you heard their new one? _Bad Animals_?”

“I actually haven’t heard anything off that one yet. I’ve heard it’s good, though.” Norma flipped the records again. “I’m pretty sure all their stuff is fantastic. I’ve nearly worn their self-titled out.”

“So you get records instead of CDs?”

Norma blushed.

“Yeah. I mean, we still have an old turn-table so…”

“Cool,” John replied. “Anyway, I have to go catch this bus but… I’ll see you in gym, okay?”

“I hope not,” she said, then quickly qualified, “I’m usually at the back, failing horribly.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I might be back there too. I hear it’s soccer next week. Wanna bet I get kicked in the head?”

Norma laughed.

“Okay.”

When he walked out the door, Norma stepped back from the records and had to catch her breath.

***

“I love Christmas Eve,” Norma enthused, letting her foot hang over the couch. “I love staying up and waiting… I’ve never actually managed to stay up all night yet. Maybe this year.”

“Hear some sleigh bells?” Caleb teased.

Norma’s eyes lit up with wonder.

“Maybe! Do you think so, Caleb?” she leaned in, then looked at him sheepishly. “Am I… is it stupid that I still believe in all that stuff? I mean, people flying around in sleighs, it’s kind of silly, isn’t it?”

Caleb leaned in and kissed her forehead.

“I don’t think it’s silly at all. But… I do think if you stay up waiting, you might psych him out. Don’t they say a watched pot never boils? But I think… you know, if you sleep, maybe… you’ll catch something out of the corner of your eye. Like UFOs. People see them all the time, but they’re not usually trying to.”

Norma smiled.

“That makes sense. Let’s head to bed, then.”

She couldn’t help herself and clapped her hands a little. 

“Do you think we should add anything more to the tree?”

It was a tiny little tree they’d found at Walmart for twenty-four dollars, and they’d decked it out in a pack of Christmas balls and a strand of lights that didn’t reach all the way to the outlet.

“I think it’s beautiful the way it is,” Caleb said, looking at her. “We’d better head to bed.”

***

Norma yawned, curling the blanket further around herself.

There was a song stuck in her head, one some people had been singing in front of the church on their way home from school.

_“Torches, torches, run with torches,_  
All the way to Bethlehem…  
Christ is born and now lies sleeping,  
Let us sing our song to him…” 

Norma hummed it, still half asleep, as she reached for Caleb. She didn’t find him and figured he must have gotten out of bed to go to the bathroom. She nuzzled back into her pillow and drifted into sleep.  
In the distance, she heard the sound of sleigh bells and smiled.

***

When Norma walked into the hallway, she heard movement downstairs; she crept slowly, stair by stair, as she had when she had been much younger and much smaller.

There were lights shining against her eyes. Little, beautiful, dancing lights.

She ran down the last few steps, nearly skipping. 

There were gifts everywhere it seemed, and her parents were sitting on the couch, smiling.

“Merry Christmas, Norma and Caleb,” her father said, and her mother nodded.

Norma hugged them and began to tear apart her gifts.

Her very favorite was a beautiful green ring from Caleb.

“Is it an emerald?” she asked him.

“I think so,” he told her.

“This is yours from me.” She handed him a tiny wrapped box and watched as he opened it.

It was a shiny silver pendant on a chain on black thread. 

“It made me think of you,” she said quietly. Her parents had made their way into the kitchen for eggnog by now. 

“Norma Louise… It’s wonderful. Thank you.”

He leaned in to kiss her on the forehead.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you too.”

She held the ring close to her heart. Her favorite.

***  


“So let me get this straight. Romeo just takes poison like a straight up dumbass and doesn’t wait around to see if Juliet is alive or not? He’s thirteen, he should just go get another damn girlfriend.”

“Good point – though I could have done without the use of ‘damn’ or ‘dumbass’, but thank you.” Norma’s teacher was hard at work writing on the board and explaining Romeo and Juliet.  
It was three weeks until Norma’s fourteenth birthday, and it was all she could think about.

“Can thirteen-year-olds really decide that they are in love? In love enough to die to be with a person they cannot have?” the teacher asked, and Norma raised her hand. “Yes, Norma? It’s good to hear from you. What’s your take on this?”

“Well, I don’t know about… dying, for anybody,” Norma began, “But I think a thirteen-year-old can be in love.”

“Board-ma has a crush,” someone whispered, and Norma whirled around and glared at him.

“Joan of Arc was thirteen when she headed a frickin’ army. So I think it’s stupid,” she looked at the boy who had spoken earlier, “To assume that the right thirteen-year-old can’t decide who they wanna be with.”

“Not with her,” somebody snickered, and Norma glared at them.

“As for killing themselves… well… being thirteen is hard.”

***

“What are we listening to today?” Caleb asked, stripping off his shirt and tossing it in the corner.

“Ummm,” Norma mused, “Let’s see. Let me find a love song.” She started to flip through their shared record collection, letting her finger tap over her cheek as she did. Finally she plucked out Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night. “I like this one.” She popped it on the record player and set the needle.

“Everywhere” began to play:

_“Can you hear me calling,_  
Out your name,  
You know that I'm falling,  
And I don't know what to say -  
I'll speak a little louder,  
I'll even shout,  
You know that I'm proud,  
And I can't get the words out…” 

Norma checked to make sure the door was locked, then pulled off her shirt and jogged up to the bed.

“You like this one, Caleb?” she asked.

Caleb grinned and raised an eyebrow.

“The song, or…?” 

Norma hit him with a pillow. 

***

Norma had caught a glimpse of John Massett during gym class. He was cute, she had to admit, but it wasn’t as if she knew anything about him. Their conversations had consisted of pleasantries, the early discography of Heart, and the occasional reference to John’s childhood in Kansas.

Seeing him in gym shorts made her a bit giggly, but she tried to keep it under control.

As far as gym class went, today had been a good day. She had proved utterly horrible at the V-sit, but at least it hadn’t been another failed attempt at pull-ups. And at least it was done. Next up would be Social Studies, which she could half-sleep through due to their twenty-something student teacher, and then she would be home free. She’d been writing in her journal a lot more lately, so maybe she could get home before Caleb did and write a bit about today.

Maybe write a bit about John Massett’s eyes. They were a pleasant, deep brown, and Norma liked them a lot.

It wasn’t, she assured herself, that she liked Caleb any less.

But maybe you could like more than one boy at a time. Maybe it was just a matter of making sure nobody got hurt in the process. 

She could sort it all out tonight. Maybe she could talk to Caleb about it… but it might be better to get it down on paper first. Caleb could be a little intense, and she wasn’t sure how he would react.

Norma blissfully opened her gym locker and pulled off her shirt.

Something hit her squarely in the back. She whirled around, not understanding at first.

Then somebody pointed and laughed. There was a stick of deodorant in the corner.

“No-Boobs Norma smells!” a tall girl with short, blonde hair exclaimed. “Nasty Norma!”

Norma shut her eyes and found herself back with Caleb.

***

“So I have something really stupid.”

“All right, hit me.” Caleb looked up from Flowers in the Attic. “Cause right what I have is that I hate Corinne.”

“Isn’t she the worst? But anyway, so.” She knelt down and picked up a pair of pom-poms. “Look what I found in our attic.”

“Four kids?” Caleb quipped.

“Haha. But no, I thought these got thrown out, and I… well, I had made up a cheer to this song. Wanna watch it?”

Caleb put his book down.

“Hell, I’ll do it with you.”

Norma burst out laughing.

“Seriously? You’ll do a cheer?”

Caleb shrugged. 

“Why the hell not?” he asked, standing up. “Just show me what to do.”

Norma handed Caleb a pom-pom with a grin, then came back and set the record player back on Heart’s self-titled album again.

“Never” began to play:  
_“Hey baby I'm talking to you -_  
Stop yourself and listen  
Some things you can never choose,  
Even if you try yeah…”

By the time they reached the end, Caleb had tripped over himself and Norma was out of breath and in a split. 

“I think you’d have made a great cheerleader, Norma Louise.”

“…I think you’d have made an awful one, Caleb.”

***

“Norma Louise… Can you make a list of your friends for me?”

Norma looked up from her diary and closed it, placing it back in the bookcase.

“My friends? I don’t really have any.” John Massett came unbidden to her mind, but she pushed him away. Earlier that day she’d heard girls whispering, and in the whispers had been a name, Ashley, John Massett’s girlfriend in another class. “How come?”

“Well, I want to take you and your friends out for your birthday. But I mean… It could be just the two of us, if you want. Where’d you like to eat?”

“Caleb… I don’t know. I mean, nothing too fancy…”

“Go as fancy as you want! It’s not every day you turn fourteen, after all.” She caught something in his eyes for a moment, some unreadable look. But just as it had come, it was gone. “Anywhere you’d like.” He almost sounded as if he were pleading.

Norma considered it.

“Maybe… uh… an Italian place?”

“Sure!” Caleb said excitedly. Sometimes he seemed like a dog, hopping for a treat. It made Norma smile. It was hard not to be excited about something when Caleb was excited, too.

“And what about you?” she asked. “It’s two months ‘til your birthday. Are your friends taking you out to a strip club or what, since you’ll be legal?”

Caleb chuckled.

“Nah. I’ll be spending it with you, if you’ll have me.”

Norma curled her nose.

“Not a strip club?”

“Hand to God, no strip club.”

***  


Norma crept downstairs, wondering whether she felt any different at fourteen than she had at thirteen. Thirteen had been important – her first year as a teenager, after all, not some pesky twelve-year-old chasing after Caleb any longer but someone who could make decisions, who could do things.

Romeo and Juliet had lived, loved, and died at thirteen.

Not that the world seemed to take much notice, apart from, in theory, letting thirteen-year-olds see PG-13 rated movies.

But fourteen? In some states, Norma had learned, people could drive at fourteen – that was what John Massett had said in class. He had said that back in Kansas, they had to get licenses at fourteen so that people could drive tractors.

Her mother was sleeping soundly on the couch, and Norma slowly crept up to her. She didn’t know what made her do it, but she softly nudged her.

The woman stirred and slowly opened her eyes.

“Norma,” she mumbled. “What are you doing up?”

“It’s seven,” Norma told her, then bit her lip, almost tempted to announce that it was her birthday, like she was five or something.

“Yeah, you have school, don’t you?” Francine asked, rubbing at her eyes. “My good little Norma. Always good in school. You work so hard…I’m so glad to have you.” She lay back on the couch. “Wake me up in an hour, will you?”

“But I’ll be in school, Mom,” Norma reminded her.

“That’s right. Well… I’ll see you when you get home then. Where’s that brother of yours?”

“Sleeping,” Norma said, feeling herself deflate inside. She wanted to say something but fought against it.

“Tell him to get up and at ‘em. If your father catches him sleeping, they’ll be hell to pay.”

Norma slumped back up the stairs and watched Caleb sleep for a few minutes. He was curled up inside himself, the blanket where Norma had left it, tucked around him and under his side.

He looked so peaceful. It was a shame to have to wake him up.

Norma opened her drawer, took out a bra, and tossed it at his head.

He stirred, yawning as he opened his eyes and seemed to register the intimate apparel that had landed on him. He sat up with a start.

“What?”

“It’s my birthday,” Norma piped up. 

“I know it is. Meet me after school, okay? I found a place. It’s going to be great – I hope, at least.”

***

The waiters were lighting candles, and Norma was sure that she was about to burst into tears.

“Caleb, it’s beautiful – but I… this has to be super-expensive, we can’t…”

“Shh. I can.”

Caleb picked up a menu and handed it to her. She flipped through it and let her finger land on one of the less-pricy items – spaghetti and meatballs.

“I’ll take this,” she said, and then flushed red and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you think they’ll let us order wine?”

“Let’s do it!” Caleb grinned and waited for the waitress to come and ask for their order. At the end, he added, “And a bottle of your… red, wine and two glasses.”

To Norma’s surprise, the waitress arrived with the bottle and a pair of glasses. When she departed, Norma beamed at him.

“You must look so much older now, Caleb. I guess… You’re grown up, now.”

He let out a little snort.

“You’re the mature one, Norma Louise. I don’t think I’ll ever know anyone quite like you.”

“Well, I hope not,” Norma quipped, “One of me is more than enough.”

Caleb popped the cork on the wine and poured a glass for Norma, then himself.

“A toast,” he announced, and then more quietly, “To a great fourteenth year. And to you!”

“To me,” Norma echoed, raising her glass. They clinked them together, tipped them back, and drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In this chapter:
> 
> "These Dreams" by Heart  
> "Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac  
> "Torches" by John Joubert  
> "Everywhere" by Fleetwood Mac  
> "Never" by Heart


	3. SPRING

“Thank God, spring is here!” Norma said as she looked around. There was green grass everywhere; she spotted some dandelions sprouting and was even sure she’d seen a rabbit dart up the alley next to their house. “I thought it’d be winter forever.”

“Hey, do you remember the trail we used to hike when we were kids?”

Norma curled up her nose.

“When we went to that crappy ass day camp, you mean?”

“Yeah… I mean, we haven’t been back in years. We should go. It’s perfect weather.”

“It’s probably boring now, Caleb,” Norma said, but remembered how much she used to love making her way up the hills, grabbing at the tree roots. It had seemed enormous when she’d been young – what if all the magic was gone by now?

“We won’t know unless we try. Unless you have something better planned.”

“Nope. My plan for this beautiful day was laundry and ironing. I’m out of bras.”

“You iron bras?”

“…Yeah, sometimes.”

They made their way to the park at the edge of town. They walked by another playground they used to frequent when they were children, staring silently at where there had once been a tire swing but was now only woodchips coated in bits of broken green glass. 

Then it was on to the trail. 

“You ever read _Bridge to Terebithia_ , Caleb?”

“Nope. I’ve heard of it, though. Why?”

“It’s about a boy and girl who are best friends… The girl doesn’t own a TV and she’s kind of weird and the boy doesn’t get along with his dad. Anyway, they create a world called Terebithia… and it’s their own secret world. And basically that’s what it’s about.”

Caleb cut in front of her a moment. They had reached a slap-dash log bridge, which ran over a creek. He took a step on to the log and looked over at Norma.

“So that’s what you want to do? Create our own Terebithia?”

“Yeah, if we can. You think we might be too old, though? We used to have all kinds of games. But it’s harder now.”

She watched as Caleb took a step forward.

“It’s us, Norma Louise. We can do whatever we want. We can play whatever games we want.”

“Oh?” Norma asked, laughing. “And why’s that?”

Caleb turned back, presumably to answer, and missed his footing on the bridge. Norma watched as his foot collided with a wet rock and then as he skittered down towards the creek below.

“Caleb!”

She looked around, panicked, losing sight of him under the bridge. She took down the hill, trying not to slip, her mind filling with questions of what she would do without Caleb, what she would ever do if he were hurt or worse.

She found him face down in the creek. She shook his shoulder; he wasn’t moving.

She rolled him over and began to do what she had seen in a million movies but hadn’t understood til now – she beat on his chest in steady motions, whispering, “ONE two three…” and wondering if she was doing  
this right at all. Should she give him mouth to mouth? Was that what she was supposed to do?

She leaned down with a shuddering breath.

Her lips brushed against his, and Caleb breathed.

Then he spurted, choked and retched; but he was alive. Bleeding from his forehead and eyes wide and staring, but alive.

On the way home, she told him, “It’s like you were Sleeping Beauty and I woke you up with a kiss.”

***  


Norma was on her way to the cafeteria when she paused in the hall.

There was something about the clusters of people, something about how she got lost in all of the voices around her that made her turn away. She was in front of the door to the school library, and the hall monitor had stepped away.

She grabbed the door and slipped inside.

“Hi, Norma,” the librarian, an older woman with brown hair and a nice smile, spoke up, and Norma smiled. Officially, one was supposed to have a library pass, with specific instructions from a teacher that wanted a student to do some work or other, but the librarian didn’t seem to care.

It wasn’t like she wanted a teacher to know about what she wanted to research, either. Or anyone, really – but it might be hard to know where to start if she decided to go it alone.  
She remembered an assembly she’d had back in elementary school. One of those assemblies where they’d talked about how people shouldn’t do drugs and all of that kind of thing. The lady in charge had told everyone to say, rather than declaring to everyone that their father took cocaine or whatever it was, to say “Someone I know.”

Norma had thought that was kind of stupid. Weren’t these people supposed to care about what was going on in people’s lives? Why have the dumb assemblies in the first place, otherwise? 

She guessed they didn’t want kids to end up getting their parents or themselves in trouble, the latter of which if it was THEM who did drugs or drank or whatnot.

“Hey,” she said, gently tapping on the library desk. “I have a weird question for something I’m writing. I apologize in advance – it’s really weird.”

“I’m sure I’ve heard weirder, Norma. Try me.”

“So… I’m writing a thing and I was just curious… um… have you ever heard of a brother and a sister, like, getting married?”

She bit her lip, wondering if she could see right through the question to the reality. And if the librarian remembered Caleb, like her teacher did…

“To each other?” the librarian asked, then paused to think about it. “Well, Cleopatra married her younger brother. I think she had him killed, though. I can’t think of any others right off the top of my head.” She chuckled. “Thinking of proposing to Caleb?”

Norma turned bright white.

“Uh, what?”

The librarian laughed.

“Just kidding. I mean, I can’t really blame Cleopatra. Most people don’t even like living with their brothers, let alone getting married to them.”

***

“Norma Louise… Close your eyes.”

Norma shut her eyes, feeling Caleb’s hands clamp over them. She giggled.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

Caleb was slowly leading her upstairs. She could feel her heart beating, pounding. Her brother, after all, could be full of surprises.

This was going to be a good one, she could tell.

“Okay, open them!”

Norma let her lashes flutter open and found herself staring a tiny television set that had been propped up on a cardboard box in the corner of their room.

“Caleb! A TV? For us?” 

She hopped up a little bit and clapped her hands. It was small, sure, but what did she care? She had a TV!

She plopped down on the cot and kicked off her shoes.

“Where did you get it?”

“Somebody threw it out, actually. Can you believe it? I mean, it only gets black and white but…”

“Hey, I don’t care! We have a TV in our room! What should we watch first?”

Caleb moved over to the TV and began to turn the dial.

“This thing is super old, I apologize… All right, let’s see what we have… Hey, what’s this?”

“I’ve heard about this movie. It’s the _Rocky Horror Picture Show_. It’s weird, and I think most of the songs are about doing it.”

Caleb chuckled and sat down next to her.

Norma put her head on Caleb’s shoulder.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she told him. 

***

Norma nibbled on the plastic part of her paint brush, considering the fact that art was clearly not her best subject.

As much as she pictured herself in her mind, ideally at least, what she had put down on the page was… not that. 

What stood before her was a wishy-washy, runny glob of yellow paint with something orange under it. 

Her art teacher walked by, making a “Hmm,” sound.

“And Norma, what is this… so far? I said to draw a family portrait.”

“This is me and my brother,” Norma told her, indicating yet another yellow blob, this one connected to a black blob.

“I assume there’s more people in your family than you and your brother. Not that you’ll be able to fit anyone else considering the way you’ve… filled up… your page so far.”

Norma dabbed her brush in the dark green paint. She wondered, if she flicked it like so, she could flick it at the teacher’s forehead and say that it was an accident. She dabbed the green at the bottom, coming up with something that ought to have been a pair of pants for Caleb. 

She narrowed her eyes at the teacher and repeated, “This painting is of me and my brother.”

As the teacher walked away, Norma heard her mumbled, “I wouldn’t be proud of that…”

Norma didn’t even hear the brush snap before it was shattered in her hands.

***

Norma lay back on the grass, staring up at the sky.

“Seems a little disrespectful, doesn’t it?” Caleb mused as he walked over to join her.

She reached up and let her fingers brush against the marble headstone beside her.

“I don’t know. Not exactly. I think they’d want people to come and see, don’t you? I never even see anyone in this cemetery. It must be so lonely to be trapped here for years and years…” She pushed herself into a standing position and read off the headstone, “Or for longer. This lady died in 1963, it says. Who even knows if she has family still alive? But by coming and sitting here, we remember her – whoever she was. It says she was a Wife and Sister.” Norma ran a hand through her hair. “I wonder why she never had any kids.”

“Well, her name was Ethel,” Caleb pointed out, “Maybe she felt like her parents did her wrong.”

Norma burst into giggles.

“Well, she could have named her kid something a little better. Like with me. I mean, if Mom wanted to name me after Marilyn Monroe, she could’ve just named me Marilyn. Norma is such an old lady name. Did they ever say where they got your name from?”

Caleb smiled.

“Mom said she was watching a show about ranch-hands right before I was born, and one of them was a guy named Caleb.”

Norma stepped over to the next tombstone.

“So, does that mean you’re meant to be a ranch-hand one of these days?”

“It’s way more likely that you’ll be Marilyn Monroe.”

Norma paused and looked ahead at another stone. She stepped up and let her fingers run over the engraving. 

This one was for a “devoted son”.

“I don’t know. She was so sad all the time, wasn’t she? What’s the point in being beautiful if you’re always sad?”

***  


Caleb was busy. He had surprised Norma that morning by telling her that he was going to take his driver’s test, in honor of his birthday.

Norma had snuck into her parent’s room while they were away – Francine had apparently gone down to the grocery store, where she had thus far remained for an hour and a half.

Under her parents’ nightstand, Norma had found a tiny leather bound book. A photo album.

Gingerly, she opened the first page, finding baby pictures of her and Caleb.

They looked so tiny, back then. 

Then, a picture of the two of them, both holding teddy bears, Caleb’s arm draped over Norma’s back, like he was protecting her even then. But what did they have to be afraid of back then, when they were so little? Caleb must be only eight in this picture, she knew, and she only three or four.

Some of the pictures were out of order – four pages in she found a pair of stills from what must have been her parents’ wedding.

Norma could count on one finger the number of times she had seen her mother smile. She was smiling in these pictures, though, big and bold and looking as if she could take on the world.

Norma wondered what it must have been like to know this woman.

***

“April showers bring May flowers,” Norma repeated with a yawn as she stared out the window. “I guess we’re not going to the trail today.” She plopped down on the cot, listening to the rat-tat-tat of the rain drip through the roof and into the corner of the room, where Caleb had set up a bucket to stop the room from flooding.

“We can go tomorrow,” Caleb told her. “Right now, we can do some other stuff.”

Norma looked nervously at the door.

“Not right now,” she told him. “Wait ‘til they’re in bed.”

She shut her eyes to think of how they might react, how their father might react, if he only knew.

Other people, Norma was slowly realizing, would think that this was bad. Looking around, she didn’t see any other brothers and sisters in love with one another, certainly not Cleopatra or whoever. Because to love someone else as deeply as yourself, you couldn’t live without them.

If anything happened to cause Caleb harm…

And so she said again, “We’ll wait. Let’s do something while we wait.”

Caleb moved over to sit beside her. 

“Tell me about school.”

She couldn’t think of a thing to tell him. It all seemed worlds away.

***

“So you passed! When do you get a car?”

Caleb laughed.

“It doesn’t really work like that. I’ll need to save up, first. Took me long enough to even have enough to rent the car to take the test. Fifty dollars to drive around for twenty minutes – it doesn’t really seem fair.”

“Will you teach me how to drive?” Norma bounced along after him. They were on their way back to the trail – this time, Norma promised herself, she would keep Caleb off the bridge. She didn’t need a scare like that again.

“Well… Yeah, I guess. I mean, I can try.” Caleb hopped up on a wall and walked across it, his body swaying back and forth as Norma looked up at him. “I’ll teach you how to drive a truck. That’s what I’ll get.”

“Why a truck? You can’t usually fit many people in it, can you? Unless somebody wants to ride in the back – what’s it called?”

“In the flatbed. And I think that’s illegal… depends on the state though. Trucks are great, though. You carry around a lot of stuff. I don’t really see myself needing a minivan.”

Norma laughed.

“What, you’re not planning to rush off and have a bunch of kids?”

“If I have a bunch of kids, then my wife can drive the minivan.”

Norma pouted.

“That’s very sexist, Caleb. What if your wife wants to drive the truck?”

Caleb seemed to consider it.

“Then I guess I’ll let her. But I want to drive it most of the time, at least.”

Norma looked to see that they had reached the trail at last.

“Don’t drown this time!” Norma warned him. “Or else I may not come in to save you!”

“… Why, because I think my wife will want to drive a minivan instead of me?”

Norma darted up on the side of a hill, cutting around a small tree. 

She waited until she wasn’t looking at him to ask, “What if you married me?”

Caleb didn’t answer for a long time, and Norma wondered if she had said something wrong, or if he hadn’t heard her.

Finally, he said, “I’d let you drive anything you wanted. Hey, if we go this way – remember, it goes to the pool?”

“It’s only April!”

“It’s probably still open.”

“We don’t have a membership.”

Caleb’s blue eyes twinkled.

“We’ll sneak in.”

“Let’s go then.”

Norma had never been to the pool – the Akron Swim Club, it was called. She had been told by classmates years before that it cost something like four-hundred dollars a year to join a swim club, and that you had to sit on a waiting list and everything. It seemed like an impossible dream, considering her parents barely managed to keep the heat on in the winter and a running air conditioner in the summer. There must be wonderful things going on in there.

“It is pretty warm for April,” Norma agreed. “Maybe they opened early? I’ve heard some places even have indoor pools. Like the Y and stuff.” Norma had heard there was a Y around somewhere – alas, that too cost money no doubt.

They continued down the winding road until they arrived, just as Caleb remembered, at the sign for the Akron Swim Club.

The pool was still drained, and the whole place looked much less majestic than Norma had remembered it looking when she’d been a child hiking here at day camp.

“It’s sad, really,” she said, “I guess everything starts up in the summer. It looks kind of depressing now. Like a ghost town.”

“We’ll come back in June,” Caleb promised, “It will be alive then.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the lips, and she kissed him back.

After all, there was no one here to see except for the trees.

***

Norma stood looking at a tree stump. There were tiny blue flowers growing out of it – the perfect May.

“Norma Louise,” Caleb began, putting his hand on her shoulder and smiling broadly.

“Yeah?”

“So I have this stupid junior prom next month, and I need to get my tickets next week if I’m gonna go and I don’t want them to be super expensive. I was wondering… if you want to go with me?”

She tilted her head up and let out a little sigh.

“A junior prom? With you? Wear a dress and… I mean, aren’t there any high school girls you’d rather go with?”

“No one is like you, Norma Louise. I’d love for you to come.”

“I don’t have any money for a dress, Caleb!”

“…We’ll figure something out, I promise! And I got a job. I start on Wednesday.”

Norma looked at him brightly.

“You do? Congratulations! Where at?”

“The thrift shop… Just ringing and bagging and stuff, but it’s something.”

Norma wrapped her arms around him. 

“That’s great!”

“I guess. Hey, to celebrate, we should go to that little deli. Remember, we used to always go there when we were kids and get freeze pops and stuff? You called it ‘Cold Cuts’ because that’s what the sign above it said for ages.”

“Is it even still open?” she asked, “I haven’t been there in… it must be months.”

“Only one way to find out.”

They took off from their front porch, racing each other around the corner.

The jingle of the door reminded Norma of what it was like to be tiny, to be five and six again and to think that the world was great and that Caleb had all the answers.

Maybe, sometimes, she still felt that way.

“Should we get freeze pops?” Norma said and laughed, running over to the refrigerated section. She opened a door and poked her head in a little. “Ooh, can I get a Strawberry popsicle thing?” She pulled out a Strawberry Shortcake Good Humor bar.

“Anything you want, Norma Louise.”

Caleb got the same thing bar but in its fudge incarnation. They sat on the curb in front of the deli, like they were kids again.

“Hey,” Norma asked, “When you get a car, we should drive around blasting ‘Fast Car’.”

Caleb groaned.

“I’m already tired of that song.”

“You’ve got a fast car…”

“Norma! No!” Caleb complained, opening his popsicle and licking it. 

“I wanna ticket to anywhere…” Norma continued, opening her own popsicle.

“Now it’s going to be stuck in my head!” 

Norma burst into giggles.

“When you least expect it! I’m going to keep doing it!”

“I’ll wear earplugs!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * In this chapter
> 
> "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman


	4. SUMMER

The door jingled behind Norma as she ran into the thrift shop. It was two doors down from the deli, which still had a “Cold Cuts” sign hanging on top of it – she considered that it was still as good a name for the place as any. 

“Caleb, Caleb!” she exclaimed, running up to the counter. “I’m so sorry to bother you at work but on the way home I had the best idea and I couldn’t stop thinking about it!”

Caleb looked up from the suits he was tagging.

“What is it?”

“My dress for the prom! I could make it myself – on the old sewing machine in the basement!”

Caleb’s eyes lit up.

“Can I help?”

“No!” she said, laughing. “I want to surprise you in how I look in it. If you help me then you won’t be surprised.” She grinned, then looked around – there weren’t any customers in the store, for now at least. “I’ll see you at home, okay? I’ll buy some fabric tomorrow and get started! I want to go dust off the machine.”

“See you at home, Norma Louise.”

She darted out the door and back into her house. The lights were off. 

“Mom? Dad?” she called.

She fumbled for the light switch and found it, but flipping it on didn’t do any good.

“Shit,” she murmured. The power must be out again – though whether through an outage or because her father hadn’t paid the bill, she wasn’t sure. 

She took tentative steps forward – at least she could see a little by the window.

“Mom?” she called again, “Dad? You guys in here? It’s Norma – I’m home.”

A thought hit her – what if something had happened to them? What if one had tripped down the steps and the other had… she didn’t know, but no scenario she came up with was a good one.

At last, out of the darkness, she heard a tiny murmur in response.

“Mom?” Norma called. She could see a faint outline sit up on the couch.

“Norma?”

“Hey, it’s me,” Norma said again.

“Norma… Go up to bed. It’s all right.”

“You’re sitting here in the dark.”

She heard a bitter laugh.

“Just head up to bed, Norma. And when your brother gets home… Tell him not to antagonize your father. He’s not in any mood tonight.”

***

Home Ec, Norma considered, was the most useless class she had ever been exposed to. In theory, it had seemed useful – she would have loved to learn how to tackle a few more dishes outside of soup, chili, and waffles, or how to pick out curtains, or how to knit or make things.

Home Ec was teaching her none of these things.

Currently, it was consisting of making godawful placemats while listening to someone’s Bananarama CD. The teacher sat up at the front, reading what appeared to be Cosmopolitan.

She was coloring in a picture of a duck on her placemat with a badly-sharpened yellow colored pencil when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

She whirled around to see John Massett.

“Oh, hey,” she said.

“So this is kind of boring, huh?” he asked. “I wanted to show you something… is that okay?”

A little voice in her head was telling her not to, that whatever this was, it had to be another joke or another trick, another person making fun of her. That wherever they were going, he’d just wait until she had been drawn in to laugh in her face and call her “Board-ma” and tell her that no boy would ever like her, not ever.

But she went anyway. She crept up and, seeing that neither the teacher nor the other students were paying much attention, made her way into the hall with John Massett.

He led her back down the hall, to where the music room was, and pushed a door open.

“No one’s in here a while.” He opened up his backpack and retrieved a record. “I thought you might wanna listen to this… Do you have it already?” Norma looked down to see Heart’s Bad Animals.

“No, I haven’t yet,” she said. Her heart was beating fast, going thump-thump-thump in her ear.

John walked over to the turn-table and placed the record on it.

“This song is my favorite,” he said, and it began:

_“You're not sure what you want to do  
with your life  
but you sure don't want me in it  
Yeah you're sure the life you're  
living with me  
can't go on one single minute…”_

“What’s it called?” Norma asked quietly.

“’Who Will You Run To’.”

It was hard to keep from letting out a squeal, and when she made her way home, that was all that she did. She skipped and ran, and sang.

***

“Oh my God, Norma.”

Francine was standing in front of Norma’s room, staring open-mouthed at her daughter, and Norma was pretty sure that she was going to cry.

“You look beautiful,” she continued, stepping over to brush a piece of Norma’s hair out of her face. “And don’t forget this,” she offered her hand, the hair ribbon wrapped around her wrist. Norma reached out to take it. “When I was your age – well, only a little older, I wore this with a beautiful blue dress to my prom. And all the boys danced with me. It was the most wonderful night of my life. But you… Norma, this dress brings out your eyes so well. Baby blue really is your color. And you really made this all by yourself?”

Norma nodded, her cheeks turning hot.

Francine reached out and slowly tied the ribbon around her hair, letting the edges hang down to brush against her neck.

“This is so nice for your brother to do. Most boys his age don’t think twice about their poor little sisters.” She leaned in and pressed a kiss to Norma’s cheek. “You have a wonderful night, and I want you to tell me all about it, okay?”

Norma nodded, blinking back tears. 

She heard the sound of a horn outside, and rushed down the stairs. 

Caleb was at the door, in a tuxedo Norma was not sure how he had acquired.

“A buddy let me borrow his truck for tonight, so…”

Norma rushed down the steps in front of the house and into the passenger side of the truck, kicking one heel inside and then the other.

“I don’t even know how I’ll walk in these,” she admitted. “Found them at the shop when you weren’t working. I wanted to surprise you.” She slammed the door quickly, hoping no one had overheard. They’d have to be somewhat incognito, wouldn’t they? Undercover.

“You’ll do fine,” Caleb told her with a smile. “I’m ready to show you off to everybody.” 

He flipped on the radio.

_“Say, remember when we were driving, driving in your car?  
Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk,  
City lights lay out before us,  
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder…”_

Caleb mimed shooting himself in the head, and Norma burst out laughing, then sang along loudly:

_“And I had a feeling that I belonged,  
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone…”_

Caleb looked at her and shook his head.

***

Caleb showed their tickets at the door, and they were ushered into a gym filled with people in fancy outfits, most of them looking like the people had spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Most of the girls looked so glamorous, like movie stars or models or people on the covers of magazines – and Norma found, all of a sudden, that she didn’t care.

Her strap kept threatening to fall down, and something itched on the back of her neck, and she was the happiest she had ever been.

_“Oh, I wanna dance with somebody,  
I wanna feel the heat with somebody,  
Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody,  
With somebody who loves me…”_

“Dance with me,” Caleb told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her into a twirl.

“Caleb!” Norma chastised. “It’s not that kind of song.” She proceeded to try for what she hoped was some sort of “funky” dance moves. “After this, we should get food. I totally saw some appetizers over by the door, and they actually looked really good. Your school goes all out, seriously.”

Caleb laughed.

“I guess they do.”

When the song had ended and something by George Michael had begun, Norma nudged Caleb. 

“Go get us some appetizers, I’m going to go request a song.”

“What song?”

“You’ll see – I think it’s a good one for us. A little old but I think they’ll still have it.”

When he was out of earshot, she made her way to the DJ.

“Hey!” a blonde girl nudged her shoulder.

“…Oh, hey,” Norma said quickly, her newfound confidence flagging. This girl was tall and shapely, and looked twenty instead of eighteen or however old she was supposed to be.

“You’re Caleb’s little sister, aren’t you?”

Norma nodded, sheepishly, freezing in her tracks.

“That’s super cute. I never knew anyone to bring their sister to this. Well, hey, have a good time – don’t let any of the creepy guys chat you up.” She jerked her finger in the corner. “The creepiest ones are over there. I’m gonna go get booze. Tell your brother I said ‘hi’.” She leaned in and stage-whispered, “He’s super cute.”

Norma stared at her, but ultimately continued on to the DJ.

A moment later, Caleb returned with drinks and a plate of tiny hot dogs.

“Dig in. Some stoner kid is eating all of them.”

Norma giggled.

“Thanks.”

She plopped them down on a table, however, as soon as the next song began.

“They’re playing it! Dance with me, Caleb.” 

She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him in for what, she hoped, was a slow dance.

_“Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,  
And think of you,  
Caught up in circles,  
Confusion is nothing new,  
Flashback, warm nights,  
Almost left behind,  
Suitcases of memories,  
Time after…”_

“Norma Louise,” Caleb whispered in her ear, “You’re everything to me.” He tilted her back, ever-so-gently. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Caleb.” It was like they were the only two people in the room. “No matter what.”

_“If you're lost you can look and you will find me,  
Time after time,  
If you fall I will catch you, I will be waiting,  
Time after time...”_

They spun together, and Norma decided that this was what forever must feel like. She closed her eyes and tried to blink back her tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In this chapter
> 
> "Who Will You Run To" by Heart  
> (the return of) "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman  
> "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" by Whitney Houston  
> "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper


	5. EPILOGUE

Norma hadn’t been able to stop crying since she had heard the words.

“Where are we going?”

In such a short phrase, Alex Romero had managed to turn her world on its head, had managed to be something she had never even dreamed she would get, had never even dreamed she deserved.

She had thought she was out of tears when she found herself lying next to Alex on her bed, on their bed, but she found them anew when he kissed her forehead and wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m a mess,” she mumbled, wiping at her face uselessly. 

“You’re not. Or maybe you are. But I am, too,” he told her, wrapping the blanket around them both. “But no one is going to tear us apart. Especially not some mountain man. He looks like he wandered off one of the worse communes.”

Norma let out a tiny giggle, trying to stop herself from bawling again.

Alex made it difficult. When he smiled, she couldn’t help herself from smiling, too. He tickled something in her, something pure and joyful. She almost wanted to clap her hands. 

Instead, she wrapped her hands around his shoulders and kissed him deep, letting her tongue meet his.

He was lovely.

When their kiss broke, she wiped away as many of her tears as she could and smiled at him.

“I want you.”

“Are you sure?”

She bit her lip and broke out into a big smile.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Okay,” he said softly. Everything he said always flowed. There was an oddness to the way he spoke, but she liked it.

She was learning that she liked everything about Alex Romero.

“Wait,” she said, hopping up. A moment later, she returned with the record player – one of the few things she couldn’t bear to get rid of that the former sleazebag owner had left behind – and set it on the end-table. Then, she did the same with a record. “You like these guys?”

“Well, I’m partial to ‘Barracuda’, but that album was pretty good too.”

She set the needle and climbed into bed, wrapping her arms around Alex’s waist. She rubbed her nose against his and let out a happy sigh.

She felt like they were already on a cloud by the time she heard the record sing out:  
 _“These dreams go on when I close my eyes  
Every second of the night I live another life…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *In this chapter  
> "These Dreams" by Heart


End file.
